Starring:
Cheryl Pollak, Stephen Gregory, Ron Perlman, Holland Taylor, Udo Kier;
Written
and directed by Richard Murphy.
With the enormous, universal
success of lowbrow comedies like "There's Something About Mary" and
"American Pie," the weirdo, highbrow comedy has become a rare bird indeed.
The strange thing is that lowbrow comedies tend to have a very short
shelf-life, whereas people still watch -- and still laugh at -- intelligent
and odd movies like "Raising Arizona" and "A Christmas Story."
The 1997 film "Betty,"
which receives its first official U.S. release today at the 4 Star Theater,
is one of those. It's a real discovery -- one that I predict will corral
a small but passionate legion of fans.
Like David Lynch's "Wild
at Heart" (1990), "Betty" takes "The Wizard of Oz" out for a spin, with
a little "America's Sweethearts" thrown in. A top box-office star named
Betty Monday (Cheryl Pollak, from "Pump Up the Volume" and TV's
"Melrose Place") freaks out and begins to worry that she doesn't work
hard enough to deserve the level of comfort at which she lives. So she
packs up her convertible and drives off to rent a house in Palm Springs
until she can get her head together.
After the renter (played
by the great cult actor Udo Kier, from "Dancer in the Dark" and "Shadow
of the Vampire") shows her the house, she wanders around for a while,
shrieking every time one of the two phones (one white, one off-white
for some reason) ring. She dazedly scoops a leaf out of the swimming
pool and suddenly finds her calling. She dumps a few dozen boxes of
generic Froot Loops into the pool and scoops them all out -- feeling
truly alive in the process.
Assuming the alias "Sheila,"
she cajoles a pool man (Stephen Gregory) into letting her tag along
with him, learning the ins and outs of pool maintenance. After a long
day, her brain is still buzzing when a muscle-cream salesman (Ron Perlman)
knocks on her door. Before long, she's joined a pyramid scheme and tries
to sell muscle cream to everyone who comes near. Likewise, a grocery
delivery boy takes her on, teaching her about groceries, as well as
golf.
Unfortunately, her hard-as-nails
manager and therapist Crystal Ball (Holland Taylor), with a mouth
like a sailor, attempts to track her down and return her to the $70
million movie set from which she vanished.
It's not too long before
we realize that the three men in her newfound life represent the Scarecrow,
Tin Man and Cowardly Lion in Dorothy's Oz, and they teach Betty
all about what it's like to be a human being (without any romantic or
sexual interest).
But never fear, "Betty"
has few moments of goopy sentiment or Important Lessons Learned. Writer/director
Richard Murphy invites us to laugh and celebrate, but he never preaches
to us.
Murphy shoots much of
the film in long, unbroken shots decorated with sunny, dry colors, and
breaks it up with a few hilarious rapid-fire montages (such as those
horrible phones ringing). Because he uses so few close-ups, we're forced
to get to know the characters through their body language instead of
their faces. Pollak in particular does a terrific job of assuming a
Julia Roberts-like combo of goofiness and gracefulness. She's lovely
in a movie-star kind of way while assuming a girl-next-door warmth.
Gregory also stands out
as the pool man, fiercely dedicated to his job. A dead rabbit in a customer's
pool rates as a red alert -- it causes the pair to march into battle,
barking orders to each other in clipped tones.
"You were damn good in
there," the pool man says afterward. Some viewers might find the clever,
back-and-forth dialogue too unnatural and forced -- perhaps rather theatrical.
But tied in with the unreal movie-ish atmosphere, it works quite well,
in my eyes. Betty does find meaning in her life, and after a
tearful goodbye with the requisite "I think I'll miss you most of all"
to the pool guy, Betty does an about-face freak-out that will
leave you laughing all the way out the door.
The
San Francisco Examiner.